critical reflections on genre analysis · elephant. hence, there was a need to combine...

Ibérica 24 (2012): 17-28

ISSN 1139-7241

Abstract

Genre Analysis of academic and professional texts has traditionally been the

focus of much of ESP (English for Specific Purposes) inspired language

descriptions. The emphasis in this form of analysis was, and still continues to be,

on the use of text-internal linguistic resources, in particular, on the use of formal

and functional properties of language, especially analysis of rhetorical “moves”

with relatively limited focus on context or text-external resources, which play an

important role in the socio-pragmatics of academic and professional genres.

This paper is an attempt to critically reflect on a general overview of this

approach to the analysis of professional genres, while at the same, extending the

scope of the construction, interpretation and use of professional genres by

focusing on the academic and professional “practices” that most academics and

professional experts are engaged in as part of their daily routine within what

Bhatia (2010) calls “socio-pragmatic space” in which such professional genres

invariably function.

Keywords: (critical) genre analysis, interdiscursivity, professional discourse,

socio-pragmatic space, text-internal and text-external resources.

Resumen

Reflexiones críticas sobre el análisis de género

Tradicionalmente, los estudios relativos al análisis de textos académicos y

profesionales como género han centrado e inspirado las descripciones

lingüísticas del área de inglés para fines específicos (IFE). Esta forma de análisis

ha hecho hincapié, y lo sigue haciendo, en el uso de recursos lingüísticos

textuales internos, y concretamente en el uso de las propiedades formales y

funcionales del lenguaje, como el análisis de los “movimientos” retóricos,

relativamente limitados al contexto o a los recursos textuales externos, que

juegan un papel importante en las características socio-pragmáticas de los

géneros académicos y profesionales. El presente trabajo pretende reflexionar de

Critical reflections on genre analysis

Vijay K. Bhatia

City University of Hong Kong (China)

[email protected]

17

Ibérica 24 (2012): 17-28

VIjAy K. BhATIA

forma crítica sobre la visión general de este enfoque para el análisis de los

géneros profesionales, y al mismo tiempo ampliar el alcance de la construcción,

la interpretación y el uso de dichos géneros centrándose en la “práctica”

académica y profesional a la que los académicos y profesionales dedican parte de

su quehacer diario, dentro de lo que Bhatia (2010) denomina “espacio socio-

pragmático” y donde los géneros profesionales funcionan invariablemente.

Palabras clave: análisis (crítico) de géneros, interdiscursividad, discurso

profesional, espacio socio-pragmático, inglés para fines específicos, recursos

textuales internos y externos.

Prologue

I would like to reflect on my engagement with genre in three main episodes

focusing on “genre analysis”, “critical genre analysis” and “interdiscursivity”,

although there is also a preliminary episode that begins with my interest in

and engagement with legal discourse. So my reflective narrative begins with

legal discourse, which was my first interest. In fact, it was my involvement in

legal discourse that brought me to genre analysis. Most of my work in law

has focused on written discourse, in particular on legislation. What I have

seen in the last four decades of my involvement in the analysis of legal

genres is that although it is easy to criticize how parliamentary counsels draft

legislation, it is very difficult to understand why it is written the way it is.

There are issues of transparency, power, control, jurisdiction, and

accessibility involved. Much of the literature on plain language law is biased

toward an excessive concern for accessibility, often at the cost of other

factors. One needs to consider other issues such as who is given the power

to interpret the genre and who ultimately will be assigned control over its

interpretation, and in what sort of jurisdiction and socio-political context.

Once we consider all these issues, we realize that it is best to consider such

genres on their own terms rather than imposing any single criterion to judge

its construction, use and interpretation. So right from the beginning of my

engagement with legal genres the question that has always been on mind, and

to some extent it still does, is: “why do these and, for that matter, other

professionals write the way they do?” The quest for the answer to this most

important question led me to genre theory, as I know it even today. So let me

reflect on my involvement and understanding of genre theory, with special

emphasis on professional genres.

18

Episode one: Genre analysis

Ever since the early conceptualisation of genre theory in the United

Kingdom in 1980s I have been partly instrumental in developing it from a

purely linguistic analysis of academic and professional genres to the analysis

of professional practices and disciplinary cultures, thus integrating textual,

strategic or socio-pragmatic, and other critical aspects of genre

construction, interpretation, use, and exploitation in various professional

contexts. What I would like to do in this narrative is to offer purely personal

reflections on some of the critical developments in this theory in the last

three decades.

My own view of genre, as discussed in my 1993 book on Analysing Genre:

Language Use in Professional Settings primarily as an instance of linguistic and

rhetorical analysis, has developed into a more comprehensive multi-

perspective and multidimensional view of genre analysis in my 2004 book on

Worlds of Written Discourse: A Genre-Based View. In its early form, genre theory

was primarily concerned with the application of genre analysis to develop

pedagogical solutions for ESP classrooms. For more than thirty years now it

is still considered perhaps the most popular and useful tool to analyse

academic and professional genres for ESP applications. Much of the credit

for its exceptional achievement goes to the seminal works of Swales (1990

& 2004) and Bhatia (1993) on the development of genre theory to analyse

academic and professional genres, with an eye on applications to ESP,

especially those used in research, legal, and business contexts.

In my later work (Bhatia, 2004), which was an attempt to develop it further

in order to understand the much more complex and dynamic real world of

written discourse, my intention was to move away from pedagogic

applications to ESP, firstly to focus on the world of professions, and

secondly, to be able to see as much of the elephant as possible, as the saying

goes, rather than only a part of it like the six blind men. I believe that all

frameworks of discourse and genre analysis offer useful insights about

specific aspects of language use in typical contexts, but most of them, on

their own, can offer only a partial view of complete genres, which are

essentially multidimensional. Therefore, it is only by combining various

perspectives and frameworks that one can have a more complete view of the

elephant. hence, there was a need to combine methodologies and devise

multidimensional and multi-perspective frameworks. My attempt to propose

a three-space model was an attempt in this direction (Bhatia, 2004).

CrITICAl rEFlECTIOnS On GEnrE AnAlySIS

Ibérica 24 (2012): 17-28 19

In the context of this development, it is important to point out that in the

early years of genre analysis, especially in the 1990s, there was relatively little

direct discourse analytical work in the available literature published in other

disciplinary fields; the situation however in the last few years changed

considerably as many professions have made interesting claims about the

study of organisations, professions and institutions based on evidence

coming from different kinds of analyses of discourse, in particular Critical

Discourse Analysis (CDA). There has been a substantial increase in research

efforts to consider the contributions of discourse analytical studies in

disciplinary fields such as law, medicine and healthcare, accounting and

management, science and technology, where there is now a better

understanding of the role of language not only in the construction and

dissemination of disciplinary knowledge, but also in the conduct of

professional practices (see for instance, Mumby & Stohl, 1996; Grant,

Keenoy & Oswick, 2001; Chiapello & Fairclough, 2002; Grant & hardy,

2004; Grant, hardy et al., 2004a & 2004b).

There is a significant recognition of the fact that many of these practices can

be better understood and studied on the basis of communicative behaviour

to achieve specific disciplinary and professional objectives rather than just on

the basis of disciplinary theories. I initiated a project that investigated

corporate disclosure practices through their typical communicative strategies

of putting together a diverse range of discourses (accounting, financial,

public relations, and legal) to promote their corporate image and interests,

especially in times when they faced adverse corporate results, so as to control

any drastic share price movement in the stock market. To my amazement, I

discovered that it was not simply a matter of designing and constructing

routine corporate documents, such as the Annual Corporate reports, but

was part of a strategically implemented corporate strategy to exploit

interdiscursive space to achieve often complex and intricate corporate

objectives through what I have referred to as “interdiscursivity” (Bhatia,

2010) to which I shall return in episode three.

This idea of studying professional practice through interdiscursive

exploitation of linguistic and other semiotic resources within socio-

pragmatic space was also the object of undertaking yet another project, in

which I had collaboration from research teams from more than twenty

countries consisting of lawyers and arbitrators, both from the academy as

well as from the respective professions, and also discourse and genre

analysts, which investigated the so-called “colonization” of arbitration

VIjAy K. BhATIA

Ibérica 24 (2012): 17-2820

practices by litigation processes and procedures (see Bhatia et al. 2003, 2008,

2009, 2010, 2012 & forthcoming).

To give a brief background to this study let me point out that arbitration was

originally proposed as an “alternative” to litigation in order to provide a

flexible, economic, speedy, informal, and private process of resolving

commercial disputes. Although arbitration awards, which are equivalent to

court judgments in effect, are final and enforceable, parties at dispute often

look for opportunities to go to the court when the outcome is not to their

liking. To make it possible, they often choose legal experts as arbitrators and

counsels, as they are likely to be more accomplished in looking for

opportunities to challenge a particular award. This large-scale involvement of

legal practitioners in arbitration practice leads to an increasing mixture of

rule-related discourses as arbitration becomes, as it were, “colonized” by

litigation practices, threatening to undermine the integrity of arbitration

practice, and in the process thus compromising the spirit of arbitration as a

non-legal practice.

The evidence for all these studies referred to above came from the typical

use of communicative behaviour, both spoken as well as written, of the

participants and practitioners from different countries, disciplinary and

professional practices and cultures, rather than just the disciplinary theories.

So in the coming few years, we are more likely to find a number of

discourse-based studies being published in journals of these disciplines, such

as management, medicine, arbitration, etc. The picture that emerges from

our current understanding of the field indicates that in addition to ESP or

more appropriately lSP, discourse and genre analysis can contribute

significantly to our understanding of organisational and institutional

practices, in addition to its current applications to discursive and professional

practices, in both academic as well as professional contexts. In fact, I would

like to go further to suggest implications of current developments in genre

theory for areas such as organisational communication, translation and

interpretation, and document and information design. The emerging picture

can be represented as in Figure 1.


Ibérica 24 (2012): 17-28 21

Emphasis in ESP-motivated Genre Analysis (GA) thus is on the production

of meaning through the use of linguistic, rhetorical, and sometimes other

semiotic resources, with some attention paid to the professional context it is

situated in, and the communicative purposes it tends to serve; however, very

little attention is generally paid to the way this production and

communication of meaning is actually constrained and eventually realised,

and in what ways this meaning is intended to be part of professional

practices, in addition to what goes into its production, reception and

consumption of knowledge so constructed. This emphasis on academic and

professional practice in addition to discursive actions encourages an

additional perspective to genre analysis, with a focus on what I would like to

call “discursive performance”, which extends the scope of analysis from

genres as discursive products to professional practice that all discursive acts

tend to accomplish. I have made an attempt to refer to this form of analysis

as “critical genre analysis” (see for details, Bhatia, 2008a, 2008b & 2010). let

me give more substance to what I mean by this.

Episode two: Critical genre analysis

As briefly introduced here, Critical Genre Analysis (CGA) is an attempt to

extend genre theory beyond the analyses of semiotic resources used in

professional genres to understand and clarify professional practices or

actions in typical academic and professional contexts. I would like to clarify

VIjAy K. BhATIA

Ibérica 24 (2012): 17-2822

Figure 1. Genre analysis and LSP.

DISCOURSE AND GENRE ANALYSIS

Organizational and Institutional Practices

Languages for Specific Purposes

Discursive and Professional Practices

English for Professional Communication

English for Academic Communication

Organizational Communication

Translation and Interpretation

Document and Information Design

that in spite of apparent similarities, CGA is meant to be different from

Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA). CDA draws on the critical theory as

cultural critique, and focuses on social relations of domination, typically

grounded in class relations, including race and gender, specifically focusing

on their oppressive sides. CDA thus tends to analyze social structures in such

a way that they are viewed as invulnerable. It encourages recognition of

domination without offering resources for action against such practices.

CDA thus examines social structures and relations and analyzes them in such

a way that the analyses encourage the power and domination to disseminate

oppressive actions in somewhat unequal social settings.

CGA, on the other hand, is a way of “demystifying” professional practice

through the medium of genres. An interesting aspect of this analysis is that

it focuses as much on generic artefacts, as on professional practices, as much

on what is explicitly or implicitly said in genres, as on what is not said, as

much on socially recognized communicative purposes, as on “private

intentions” (Bhatia, 1995) that professional writers tend to express in order

to understand professional practices or actions of the members of

corporations, institutions and professional organizations. In CGA therefore

no professional, institutional, or organizational practices are assumed but

negotiated. They seem to be in a constant struggle between competing

interests. CGA with its focus on practice considers individual members of

professional organizations, though bound by their common goals and

objectives, still having enough flexibility to incorporate “private intentions”

within the concepts of professionally shared values, genre conventions, and

professional cultures.

A notion of practice thus describes the relation between shared values and

flexibility as dynamically complex, in that institutional and organizational

ideologies, and constraints are often conventionalized and standardized, but

not always static or inflexible. In professional communication, a theory of

practice is a function of organizational and institutional structures as evident

in the everyday activities of professionals, and conditions of production and

reception are crucial. Besides, in professional communication in the age of

computer-mediated communication, CGA also considers the overwhelming

power and influence of technology in professional life. Thus professional

practices give shape to actions in specific professional contexts, they get

established so long as the members of the professional community continue

to follow the conventions, which are shared by the members of a specific

professional discourse community. CGA makes a commitment, not only to


Ibérica 24 (2012): 17-28 23

describe, but also to explain, clarify, and “demystify” professional practice. In

this sense, CGA is not an initiative to change professional practices of

individual disciplinary, institutional, and corporate communities, but to

understand how professional writers use the language to achieve the

objectives of their professions.

Episode three: Interdiscursivity

One of the most important concepts that seem to be crucial to the study of

professional genres and practices is what has been referred to as

“interdiscursivity” (Bhatia, 2010). I have noticed that within the concept of

genre and professional practice, one can see expert professional writers

constantly operating within and across generic boundaries creating new but

essentially related and/or hybrid (both mixed and embedded) forms to give

expression to their “private intentions” within the socially accepted

communicative practices and shared generic norms (Bhatia, 1995;

Fairclough, 1995). Interdiscursivity is invariably across discursive events that

may be genres, professional activities, or even more generally professional

cultures. It is often based on shared generic or contextual characteristics

across two or more discursive constructs and some understanding of these

shared features is a necessary condition to an adequate understanding of the

new construct. Interdiscursivity thus can be viewed as a function of

“appropriation of generic resources” across three kinds of contextual and

other text-external resources: genres, professional practices, and professional

cultures.

From the point of view of genre theory, especially in the context of

professional communication, it is necessary to distinguish appropriations

across text-internal and text-external resources, the former often viewed as

intertextuality, and the latter as interdiscursivity. Intertextuality operates

within what we refer to as “textual space” and has been widely studied

(Kristeva, 1980; Foucault, 1981; Bakhtin, 1986; Fairclough, 1995); however,

a vast majority of appropriations often take place across text-external

semiotic resources at other levels of professional, institutional and

disciplinary discourses, such as genres, professional, institutional, and

disciplinary practices, and professional, institutional and disciplinary cultures

to meet socially shared professional, institutional, and disciplinary

expectations and objectives, and sometimes to achieve “private intentions”.

VIjAy K. BhATIA

Ibérica 24 (2012): 17-2824

These latter forms of appropriations that operate in what could be viewed

as “socio-pragmatic space” are essentially interdiscursive in nature. It may be

pointed out that often all these appropriations, whether text-internal or text-

external, discursively operate simultaneously at all levels of discourse to

realise the intended meaning, and have been widely used in the

recontextualization, reframing, resemiotisation or reformulations of existing

discourses and genres into novel or hybrid forms. In addition to this,

appropriation of generic resources is also very common in various forms of

hybrids, such as mixing, embedding and bending of genres (see for details

Bhatia, 2004, 2008a, 2008b & 2010). The general picture representing

interdiscursivity in genre theory can be summarised as in Figure 2.

I have already mentioned instances of interdiscursivity from at least two

professional contexts to illustrate that it operates at all levels, generic,

professional practice, and professional culture, but also to claim that it not

only allows a more rigorous and comprehensive analysis of genres in and as

professional practice, but at the same time, also encourages evidenced-based

studies of professional and institutional practices and cultures through the

genres they often use.

Epilogue

In this personal reflective narration of my engagement with genre analysis

over more than three decades, I have made an attempt to account for the


Ibérica 24 (2012): 17-28 25

Figure 2. Interdiscursivity in Genre Theory.

I

INTERDISCURSIVITY IN GENRE THEORY

Appropriation of generic resources

Recontextualization Reframing Resemiotisation Reformulation

Hybridity

Genre-Mixing Genre-Embedding Genre Bending

developments in genre theory right from its early conceptualisation in Swales

(1981 & 1990) and Bhatia (1993) through to its later developments as in Bhatia

(2004, 2008a, 2008b & 2010). The account is significant in several respects.

Firstly, it traces the development of genre theory from a predominantly

lexico-grammatical and rhetorical analysis of genres towards a more

interdiscursive and critical genre analysis and understanding of professional

practice. It tends to offer a useful procedure for the study of professional

practices, which otherwise are often discussed and explained through

organizational, management, and other institutional theories (Marshak et al.,

2000; Keenoy & Oswick, 2001; Philips & hardy, 2002; Boje, Oswick & Ford,

2004; hardy et al., 2004). It thus presents a complementary methodological

alternative in the form of genre-based investigations of professional,

organizational and institutional practices. Secondly, it indicates a

development of genre theory from a purely ESP or lSP pedagogic

application to a more critical engagement leading to demystification of the

realities of the professional world. Thirdly, it argues for a multidimensional

and multi-perspective methodological framework to understand and analyse

professional and academic genres, professional practices, and disciplinary

and professional cultures as comprehensively as possible.

At a more theoretical level, it thus creates a valuable research space for the

development of a more comprehensive and delicate system of

interdiscursivity in genre theory (Bhatia, 2010), which has not been

sufficiently explored in the current literature on genre. More generally, it

underpins the importance of a multidimensional and multi-perspective view

of genre analysis, which, I believe, has tremendous potential for the future

of genre studies. however, I must emphasize that this reflective account

represents a subjective and very much personal and continual engagement

with genre theory. I must close this critical account with the reminder that

the story is not complete yet, and I am sure there will be much more to

reflect on in the years to come.

[Paper received 15 July 2012]

[Revised paper accepted 31 July 2012]

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VIjAy K. BhATIA

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Bakhtin, M.M. (1986). Speech Genres and Other

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professional communication: The case of ‘private

Vijay K. Bhatia, retired from City University of hong Kong, has research

interests in genre analysis of academic and professional discourses in legal,

business, newspaper, advertising contexts. he has widely published in all

these areas as research articles, books chapters, edited volumes, and


Ibérica 24 (2012): 17-28 27

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Communication 21: 32-50.

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Bhatia, V.K. & G. Garzone (Forthcoming).

Discourse Analysis of Arbitration Awards.

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(eds.) (2004a). The SAGE Handbook of

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individually written books. Two of his books Analysing Genre: Language Use in

Professional Settings (longman, 1993) and Worlds of Written Discourse: A Genre-

based View (Continuum, 2004) are widely used by researchers in genre theory

and practice. Some of his recent research projects include Analyzing Genre-

bending in Corporate Disclosure Documents, and International Arbitration Practice: A

Discourse Analytical Study in which he leads research teams from more than 20

countries.

VIjAy K. BhATIA

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